Editorial: House should stop free-lance diplomacy

Thursday, May 20, 1999 | 12:46 p.m.

A bipartisan group of U.S. House members is trying its hand at diplomacy to end the military conflict in Yugoslavia. The 11-member group, which includes Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., traveled to Vienna, Austria several weeks ago and met with members of the Duma, Russia's equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives.

But last week Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the group that its endeavors could damage the administration's own diplomatic efforts. Unfortunately Albright's message was lost on the group, which is continuing to promote the peace plan it developed with the Communist-led Duma last month. That plan calls for a simultaneous end to NATO's bombing, a withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo and an end to the fighting by the Kosovo Liberation Army.

It has long been a tenet of U.S. foreign policy that diplomacy rests with the executive branch, specifically the State Department. Failure to speak with one voice in foreign affairs could have disastrous consequences and could actually delay the forging of a diplomatic solution. "If Democrats had done this in the Gulf War, Republicans would have called it treason," Rep. Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn., the senior Democrat on the International Relations Committee, said.

This is not to say that Congress shouldn't debate all sides and viewpoints on whether military intervention is warranted. But it is an entirely different matter when members of the House seek to be junior secretaries of state. Free-lance diplomacy is a bad precedent and undermines U.S. foreign policy, confusing other nations as to who is in charge. House Speaker Dennis Hastert should stop these efforts immediately.